The Lead: Yahoo tops $30 for first time since 2008, another record for Facebook

A day after their respective CEOs took the stage in San Francisco and lamented the NSA's spying techniques, Yahoo and Facebook hit new highs on Wall Street amid optimism for the Silicon Valley stalwarts.

Yahoo's share price moved higher than $30 for the first time since Microsoft was bidding to purchase the Sunnyvale Internet giant for up to $33 a share in 2008, with the stock selling for as much as $30.27 before closing with a 1.6 percent gain at $29.65. At the time, co-founder and then-CEO Jerry Yang said Yahoo would eventually be worth more than Microsoft's asking price, but the share price has taken more than 5 years to near its 2008 levels.

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Yahoo shares have nearly doubled in the past year, however, as investors and analysts have showed more belief in its current leader, former Google (GOOG) executive Marissa Mayer, and banked on the firm's Asian investments including Chinese Web giant Alibaba, which could go public soon at a valuation topping $100 billion.

Still, Mayer believes that Yahoo's turnaround has a much longer road ahead of it, saying Wednesday that "It's going to take multiple years" for Yahoo to move "in the direction and grow at the rate we want."

Facebook's growth rate has already been lauded as phenomenal, with the Menlo Park social network attracting more than 1 billion users and showing strong advances in mobile revenues during the past year. Belief in the company's model helped spur the stock to top $45 for the first time Wednesday and shares hit another new all-time high of $45.62 Thursday after J.P. Morgan suggested the stock could top $50 by the end of next year.

J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth issued a note saying Facebook would continue to develop its mobile revenues, projecting that ad sales targeting users on smartphones and tablets will be a majority of Facebook's total revenues by the fourth quarter of this year and hit 60 percent next year. As a result, the analyst boosted his price target on Facebook stock to $53, 20 percent higher than his previous estimate.

Facebook stock closed with a 0.6 percent decline at $44.75 Thursday, but has gained 68.8 percent since its most recent earnings report as investors and analysts have praised the company's mobile efforts. Those gains may have been a factor in the timing of rival Twitter's confidential filing for its initial public offering, which the San Francisco company announced Thursday afternoon.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Down 5.71, or 0.34 percent, to 1,683.42

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Jeremy C. Owens at 408-920-5876; follow him at Twitter.com/jowens510.